Books that have affected you deeply

[Frostball]

I just finished wuthering heights for the first time, and now I feel strange. I don't know whether to call it gloomy, ecstatic, angry, or what. I feel like I want to cry that if Heathcliff had listened to all of Catherine's conversation without running off that one time, there could have been an ending besides... what happened. I am perplexed by Cathy and Hareton falling in love at the end. I really didn't expect many things that happened from this book. It was all so tense, dreamlike, sad, bitter, angry, and downright vengeful. Heathcliff's meanest scenes were terrible.

Truly this book has me in an odd mood now. Are there any books others have read that affected them in any way like this?

[Marbles]

The best book is the one which resists paraphrase and that which the reader doesn't know what to make of. Seems like Wuthering Heights fits that definition for you :)

[Poetaster]

The Oresteia by Aeschylus.
Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell.
Homer's Iliad and Odyssey
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
The poems of Robert Frost

To name a few for me.

[YesNo]

There are many books that could have such an affect on a reader. Each of us has time to only read a few of them. This is one book that keeps coming back to my mind.

John Gardner, October Light: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/32534.October_Light

[Iain Sparrow]

To Kill a Mockingbird
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
The Diary of a Young Girl
The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America
Nineteen Eighty-Four
The Man Who Would Be King
2001: A Space Odyssey

[deborah8315]

A title that comes to mind right now is Gone With the Wind, as I used to compare myself to Scarlett when I was 16.
Then, during my undergraduate studies I had the pleasure to read Rebecca, by Daphné du Maurier and it left a mark on me.

[Lykren]

I didn't love Wuthering Heights, but I can see how it could have that effect on you.

Books that moved me deeply (in no particular order):

The Tale of Genji
Anna Karenina
Snow Country
Ulysses
Poems of Emily Dickinson
Poems of Wallace Stevens
Pride and Prejudice
Macbeth
The Tempest
The Dream of the Red Chamber
Tess of the D'Urbervilles
The Plum in the Golden Vase

[Pierre Menard]

Leaves of Grass
Snow Country
Poems of W.B. Yeats
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
Julius Caesar (Shakespeare)
Collected Fictions, Non-Fiction and Poetry of Jorge Luis Borges
Dubliners
Sophocles' Theban Plays
Suttree
Book of Disquiet
To The Lighthouse
Waiting for Godot
Lord Jim

[Lykren]

Snow Country

I'm not the only one! :D

[Pierre Menard]

I'm not the only one! :D


Beautiful novel. The opening on the train is one of the great openings in literature.

[Lykren]

Beautiful novel. The opening on the train is one of the great openings in literature.

Most definitely. The ending isn't too shabby either. Neither is what comes between!

[Marbles]

In no particular order

Khalil Gibran - The Broken Wings [Arabic novel]
Pablo Neruda's poetry
Orhan Pamuk - My Name is Red
Edward Said - Orientalism
Faiz Ahmed Faiz's poetry
Miguel de Cervantes - Don Quixote
Franz Kafka - Metamorphosis and other fictions

etc

[ronaldodupah]

I agree, a book that you cannot guess the end is more appealing and gives one the urge to read.

[tonywalt]

Catcher in the Rye. Holden's cooler than hell.

[Kafka's Crow]

Anything by Fyodor Dostoevsky.

In Western Literature, the only book that reaches the Dostoevskian completeness of vision, in my most humble opinion, is Razor's Edge by W Sommersett Maugham. After reading all types of books all my life, this work taught me how to look at life. The key messages:

Life is what you make of it.
Money was not meant to be essential but you can not live without it. In our artificial lives money is like oxygen.
Look for happiness more carefully, it might be all around you and you might be running after something which is actually bad for you in every respect.
Life is a blank canvas, go on paint your masterpiece.
Life is a piece of a Persian rug, admire the colours appreciate the craftsmanship. You can't have the whole carpet, make do with your piece of it. In the end it is beautiful but useless (vanity of vanities...).

[tonywalt]

A title that comes to mind right now is Gone With the Wind, as I used to compare myself to Scarlett when I was 16.
Then, during my undergraduate studies I had the pleasure to read Rebecca, by Daphné du Maurier and it left a mark on me.

I used to compare myself to Clark Gable - still do. Sometimes i say, "frankly, I don't give a damn" to girls (even when i give a damn)

[hannah_arendt]

I just finished wuthering heights for the first time, and now I feel strange. I don't know whether to call it gloomy, ecstatic, angry, or what. I feel like I want to cry that if Heathcliff had listened to all of Catherine's conversation without running off that one time, there could have been an ending besides... what happened. I am perplexed by Cathy and Hareton falling in love at the end. I really didn't expect many things that happened from this book. It was all so tense, dreamlike, sad, bitter, angry, and downright vengeful. Heathcliff's meanest scenes were terrible.

Truly this book has me in an odd mood now. Are there any books others have read that affected them in any way like this?

I have read "wuthering Heights" for about 8 times. I come back to this novel each year, as to Tolkien. However,, Emily Bronte`s books affected me very deeply. Each time I read it, I found it different.

[Vota]

The Iliad and The Odyssey
The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
Hamlet
Crime and Punishment

[English reader]

1. The Bible
2. The Turning of the Screw by Henry James
3. Emma by Jane Austen
4. Hamlet by Shakespeare
5. The Art of War by Sun Tzu

All of these books have helped shaped many of my outlooks on life.

[kev67]

The book that affected me the most deeply was Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. It took me about three weeks to get it out of my head.

[chipper]

1. The Bible
2. To Kill A Mocking Bird
3. Catcher in the Rye
4. The Little Prince
5. Centennial
6. The Well

[millwallbill]

"The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists" by Robert Tressell. I found it an inspiring & life changing book.

[Chris 73]

Never Let Me Go- Kazou Ishiguru.-They all act like a bunch of Sheep.
Hyperion-Dan Simmons (The Scholar's Tale). The Merlins Disease.
True Grit-Charles Portis. Reiterates an idea that idea that I strongly adhere to-No adventure should be without cost.
The Spy Who Came In From The Cold-John Le Carre. That ending.
The Death Of Sweet Mister-Daniel Woodrell- That ending.

[WICKES]

The poetry of Philip Larkin deeply disturbed me. I also found the poetry of Ted Hughes had a big impact. But Larkin got inside me like no other writer ever has.

[Vota]

I'm gonna have to add War and Peace to my list.

[Pope of Eruke]

On The Road, most recently.

[Poetaster]

Mason and Dixon affected me very deeply, most recently.

[Lykren]

Mason and Dixon affected me very deeply, most recently.

I have not read any Pynchon yet, but I'm looking forward to doing so, Mason & Dixon in particular. The first sentence is a stunner.

[Poetaster]

I have not read any Pynchon yet, but I'm looking forward to doing so, Mason & Dixon in particular. The first sentence is a stunner.

When you do I hope you enjoy it. If you like that first sentence, the others are going to knock you sideways.

It's one of my favourite novels.

[WyattGwyon]

"The Grand Inquisitor," Ivan's "poem" from The Brother's Karamazov was important to me as a teen. It gave me the first inkling of how institutional evolution selects (by analogy to natural selection in evolutionary theory) for evil doctrines and behaviors that are not necessarily shared or endorsed by many individuals in an institution's hierarchy.

[LadyDedlock]

World War Z by Max Brooks
The Woman in White by Sir Wilkie Collins - first time I read this I was just in a daze.
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
The Waves by Virginia Woolf - my favourite of her works.
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier - it was like being in a dream somehow.

[Bengt Mettyl]

A few come to mind: 'The Ghost Ship' by Richard Middleton (found a copy around 1970 after years of casual searching without much expectation of success), 'Verses of a Fighter' Pilot by Archie Weir (same story as above but took longer to find - eventually purchased via the catalogue of an aviation bookseller in New York, and to a lesser degree, 'Ruined City' by Nevil Shute.

[Carmilla]

Hi,

A Tale of Two Cities

[Pope of Eruke]

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, I can relate....

[hannah_arendt]

The book that affected me the most deeply was Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. It took me about three weeks to get it out of my head.

GE left somwthing in me. I still cannot forget it.

[WICKES]

Dickens' Christmas Carol. What is it about that story? I can't watch any TV adaptation. No matter how bad it is, I will cry like a baby (and I'm a 37 year old man!!)

[2X2E5]

Notes from the Underground by Dostoevsky
The Sorrows of Young Werther by Goethe
Adolphe by Constant

[totoro]

I think The Blind Owl was the one that affected me that way.

[Motherof8]

The Bible David Copperfield and Mill on the Floss

[Marcus1]

Snow Country - Yasunari Kawabata
Beauty and Sadness - Yasunari Kawabata
Sound of the Mountain - Yasunari Kawabata
The Passion According to G.H. - Clarice Lispector
Agua Viva - Clarice Lispector
A Hunger Artist - Franz Kafka
Brodie's Report - Jorge Luis Borges
Street of Crocodiles - Bruno Schulz
The Book of Disquiet - Fernando Pessoa
Hourglass - Danilo Kiš
To the Lighthouse - Virginia Woolf
The Waves - Virginia Woolf

[tonywalt]

catcher in the rye - jd salinger
disgrace - jm coetzee
norwegian wood by murakami
after dark by murakami
cats eye by margaret atwood
crime and punishment by dostoyevsky

[prendrelemick]

Dickens' Christmas Carol. What is it about that story? I can't watch any TV adaptation. No matter how bad it is, I will cry like a baby (and I'm a 37 year old man!!)

It's not just me then.

[free]

Herman Hesse - Demian
John Galsworthy - The Forsyte Saga
John Fowles - The Magus
Erich Fromm - Escape from Freedom
Erich von Däniken - The Gods Were Astronauts
Mireille Guiliano - French Women Don't Get Fat :)